nebraskafandb

I can't believe this whole time I thought I had flat tops just because of the year. Hardly even crossed my mind to look into what the actual differences were. Pretty obvious now between the two piston dome's.

Let me start out by saying this is my first time working on a z. So please excuse me for my lack of knowledge when it comes to z's, carburetor cars in general really. So I bought a 73 240z and from my research I just assumed I had flat top su carbs but now that I have done a little more research they clearly look like round top to me just by the the look of the dome. I could really use a second opinion/ confirmation that I'm not going crazy and these are in fact round top carbs. Thanks in advance!

I had no idea about the cage. I guess I figured if you could roll off the side of a mountain with a roll cage and survive then you could probably survive a crash. Learn something new everyday. Maybe just a roll bar so I can put a harness in there? Then again I've heard harness's can do more harm than good too.

If I keep the car long term then I would want it to be my second car that I take out on the weekends and drive to work on nice summer days. I wouldn't mind taking it to the track from time to time as well. The roll cage idea was really just for safety. Lets be honest safety was not among the top priorities in the 70's and if I'm driving this car a decent amount in the summer time then I wouldn't mind having a little piece of mind driving around knowing some idiot could rear end me t-bone me at any moment and I might be a little better off because of the roll cage. I think my plan has always been to get it running and driving safely and go from there. I'm kind of anal about my cars and the only thing holding me back from doing rust repair right now is that I would really like to strip the car down to the uni-body get it media blasted and build it back up from there. I would start with suspension and brakes and go from there. I didn't buy this car with speed in mind, I've had my fair share of stupid fast cars. I would rather have a nice balanced light weight good handling car than an all out speed machine. I think with age you start to realize speed isn't everything. After dumping 15k into the drivetrain of my last car(03 mitsubishi evolution) I'm over it. Not worth it.

Thanks Miles! That information will definitely come in handy, the forums have already been such a huge help. There's nothing better than buying a car and then realizing there is a strong following of that car on forums. Glad to be part of the z community.

Thanks for all the input guys, I think I'm going to do it my way. I think more modern technology on classic cars is really the best of both worlds. But you're right john, body work is first priority and then I'll go from there. I was really surprised how easily the car started up after 25 years. These engines are solid. Also real quick, as far as removing the emissions equipment on these cars. Removing air pump and everything that goes along with it..is this a pretty common thing to do on the 73+ z's? Not looking for more horsepower necessarily, I just want to clean up the engine bay and have less vacuum lines to worry about.

I got it running last weekend, carbs needs serious tuning. I want to switch to the round top from the 70-72 and delete all the emissions crap but there goes all the originality already! Your starting to see my dilemma.. I just need to make up my mind. If I plan on keeping it "forever" then I don't care about resale but if these start to become serious collector cars..then I'm going to regret cutting the fenders and changing out the drivetrain...

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum and the z world in general. I owned a 300zx tt back in the day but that's about it. Anyways, recently I found somewhat of a barn find 1973 240z with 56k original miles, untouched and sat in a garage for the past 25 years. I've had the car for a couple of months and I can't for the life of me decide what direction I want to go with the car so I thought I would try to get some input here. The guy I bought it from had no idea what he had so I got it for 1k. It's far from perfect but rust is only in the quarter panel and one of the fenders. The biggest issue being that some ******* in the 80's cut a sunroof in the roof and it looks horrible. I'm wondering if spending a lot of money restoring the car back to original would really be worth it because of the low miles or should I build it the way I want to..possible and engine/tranny swap, fender flares, big wheels, roll cage..ect ect. I wouldn't even be bringing this up if the value of the 240's weren't rising by the day and I recently saw one listed for 60k fully restored and it had more miles than mine, obviously that guy will never get that but who knows 10 years from now..I'm fairly mechanically inclined so the restoration part doesn't scare me. I just don't know what to do! Shit if I can fix all the body damage..paint it, clean it up, restore everything that needs restoring and get 40k or more sometime down the road..that's tempting. Sorry for the long post, horrible noobish way to start my forum debut here haha.